Effect Measure is a forum for progressive public health discussion and argument as well as a source of public health information from around the web that interests the Editor(s)

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Someone should be fired for this

After a long post yesterday sending everyone to Jordan Barab's Confined Space I have to do the same thing today because of this post.

Here's the gist. Everyone knows (or should know) that immigrant and undocumented workers are at greater risk for being inujured or killed on the job compared to native-born workers. They have less training, lousier jobs, longer hours, and work for employers who often couldn't care less for their welfare. They don't know about OSHA standards. They are insecure in their jobs and afraid of the government, including safety inspectors (assuming that any ever show up). Obviously they don't call OSHA themselves.

Periodically the federal Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE, the former INS) rounds them up, arrests and deports them. But it's not easy to find them. Better to lure them to a common spot and grab them then, which is what happened to dozens undocumented workers from Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador and Ukraine at the Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro, North Carolina. They were lured there by a flier announcing free coffee and doughnuts at a mandatory OSHA meeting.

[Allen McNeely, head of the state Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health division] said that neither his division nor the federal OSHA was involved in the arrests. He said the trick has eroded trust between the Labor Department and the workers it is trying to keep safe.

In recent years, the Labor Department has made an effort to reach out to the state's thousands of immigrant workers, especially those in construction, because they are among the most likely to be killed or injured at work.

"We are dealing with a population of workers who need to know about safety," McNeely said. "Now they're going to identify us as entrappers."

Local news interviewed the federal tricksters who were, as Jordan observes, "unapologetic":

Federal immigration officials say they have the right to round up illegal immigrants in any manner they see fit -- even if it means impersonating Occupational Safety and Health Administration officials.

Officials at the state Department of Labor say that federal officials last week rounded up 48 illegal immigrants, who were working construction jobs at Seymour Johnson Air Force base, by luring them into a fake OSHA meeting.

The men now face deportation.

Whoever in the ICE thought this one up, approved it, and issued the orders for it SHOULD BE FIRED FOR INCOMPETENCE, STUPIDITY, CALLOUSNESS, NEGLIGENCE, INCREDIBLE LACK OF JUDGMENT AND IRRESPONSIBLE BEHAVIOR.